West Marin rallies around family faced with death of father, 4-year-old with cancer

A West Marin family is struggling to make ends meet after the unexpected death of a man just weeks after his 4-year-old son was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.

Roneil Powell, 43, died Sunday in his sleep at his Inverness home, just two days after his son Ezequiel came home from his first round of chemotherapy for stage-four embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma — a malignant soft tissue tumor near his pelvis that has metastasized to his spine, lungs and maybe his bones. Powell, who is believed to have died from a massive heart attack, is survived by his son, 6-year-old daughter Yolanda and his wife Alex Porrata.

West Marin community members have rallied around the family, holding fundraisers and creating a website where people can donate money to help. Alex Porrata was laid off from her job recently and had been searching for a new one before her son got sick. Her husband was the family's sole source of income and he didn't have life insurance. The family is living at Alex Porrata's parents' house.

Elisabeth Ptak, of Inverness, said the outpouring of support for her friends has been uplifting. A tamale sale this week sold 1,000 tamales, workers at local businesses are donating their tips to the family and more fundraisers are in the works.

"There's going to be so many expenses," Ptak said. "And next week Ezequiel goes back to the hospital in Oakland for his next round of chemotherapy."

Ptak has known the Porrata family for 40 years and said Powell worked really hard to support his family, working as a data recovery engineer at Novato-based DriveSavers Data Recovery, which specializes in recovering lost data from hard drives, iPhones and camera cards.

"Ron was a wonderful person. Most everyone I've talked to has described him as gentle. He was a tall man, 6-foot, 5-inches tall, but he was so calming and so sweet," Ptak said.

Mike Cobb, director of engineering at DriveSavers and Powell's boss, said Powell was just about to celebrate his 10-year anniversary with the company. He specialized in preparing camera cards to retrieve pictures and other memories.

"He worked with a small team of three guys doing prep work for the jobs," Cobb said. "He always had a smile on his face and he was always willing to help everybody."

"He really was a very happy, happy person. It took so much to even get a rise out of him," Yolanda Porrata said. "He radiated so much positive energy and he saw the goodness in everybody."

Powell grew up in Los Angeles, but attended college at Dominican University in San Rafael where he was a star basketball player. After graduating in 1994 with a bachelor's degree in business, he coached the university's women's basketball team between his two seasons of professional play on basketball leagues in Australia and New Zealand.

It was at Dominican University that he first met his future wife Alex Porrata, later reconnecting and marrying her after college, said longtime friend Billy Borda.

Borda, of Torrance, played basketball with Powell and was his roommate for many years during and after college. He said Powell took him under his wing and was a role model to him, especially when they became fathers to daughters that are just two months apart in age.

"He was outgoing, friendly and the kind of person that always found the good in somebody," Borda said. "He was someone who definitely led by example in everything he did."

The last year has been a challenging one for the Powell-Porrata family as they have juggled work and driving to and from Petaluma where their daughter Yolanda attends a Spanish immersion primary school. Stresses mounted in December when Ezequiel began having stomach aches. It got to the point where he was unable to walk and local doctors sent him to an Oakland hospital, where they discovered the rare childhood tumor.

But Powell remained calm, giving his family the strength to move forward.

"Ron was such a devoted, patient and loving father," Yolanda Porrata said. "He just lived for his family."

Donations benefiting the Powell-Porrata family can be made at www.ezpowell.org, or at any Wells Fargo branch. Reference the Roneil Powell Memorial Fund and note "gift donation" on your transaction. The federal taxpayer code for the memorial fund is 46-4722983.